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The Unthinkable is Happening

"More and more companies are facing difficulties and even crises of survival that go far beyond the usual ups and downs of the economic cycle."

Shock Waves and Shock Wave Riders

"What are some of the shock waves we already know about that are affecting and will affect businesses around the world?"

Service Leadership

"The service leader is willing to put empowerment above personal power; contribution above his or her own ego satisfaction; and the needs of the team above his or her own needs for credit and acclaim."

Finding the Driving Patterns

"Although it isn't possible to reduce the rapidly changing business environment to a simple formula, we can still discern some basic realities that can get our feet back on the ground."

New Structural Options

"Fewer and fewer workers now fall into the category of task doers, that is, those who perform tasks that are fully predesigned and require little or no added value in the form of knowledge, judgment, creativity, or strategy."

Pre-Capitalist, Capitalist, and Post-Capitalist Models

"It is this evolution in the structuring of resources and relationships that is causing havoc with many businesses, and causing confusion in the minds of many business leaders."

Myth and Misconceptions about Setting Directions

"Many organizations waste enormous amounts of time and precious intellectual energy trying to plan and forecast their futures."

Conventional Planning

"Planning, as it is conventionally done, has little to offer in any highly ambiguous venture."

The Strategic Success Model

"Customer Value Package ? the infrastructure for value creation the enterprise uses in doing business with its customers. "

The Eight Critical Environments

"Environmental intelligence has more value than just in averting disasters."

What Are We Really Good At?

"Quite a few organizations get themselves into painful and unproductive situations by trying to enter markets they have no business being in."

How Do We Think?

"It is a relatively rare enterprise that has freed itself from intellectual clannishness and can honor all ways of thinking and knowing."

What Do We Reward, Punish, and Condone?

"What kinds of assignments or opportunities are used as rewards? Are there others that serve as punishments or inducements to leave?"

Are We Committed?

"It's striking how few organizations regularly measure and assess the state of the heart, the perceptions of quality of work life on the part of the people who work there."

Opportunity or Threat?

"Threats are created mostly by events, trends, or competitor actions."

Customer Access

"One of the first places to look for advantages is in customer-base analysis."

Strategic Partnering

"One of the hallmarks of the next decade of business will surely be an increase in partnering among organizations."

Customer Value

"What is customer value? It's the "mindware" created by the hardware and software you provide."

Hierarchy of Customer Value

"Think of customer value as forming a hierarchy analogous to Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs."

Vision Statement & Mission Statement

"Three components help to make a vision statement valid and useful for people."

Business Logic

"Let's develop this idea of business logic and see how we might model it so that the leaders of the organization can sort it out and make sure it works."

Customer Value Package

"Let's see how these seven components go together to form the infrastructure for delivery of customer value."

Gap Analysis

"In quite a few organizations, the planning processes wander off course somewhere and don't ever get to the gap-analysis stage."

Action Planning

"The more effective the thinking process is at the strategic level, the less elaborate the planning process needs to be at the tactical, operational levels."

Executive Evangelism

"Not all executives are comfortable with the evangelistic role, but nearly all can offer some semblance of it just by being who they are."

Helping the Organization Learn

"By helping each unit manager, and especially each middle manager, think of his or her unit as an enterprise within the overall enterprise, you can make the overall concept come alive in everyday work."

This Book Summary contains Concept Extracts from:

The Northbound Train
Karl Albrecht

Amacom
1994
(c) 1994 Karl Albrecht.

Biography: Karl Albrecht (San Diego, California) is a pioneer in developing new concepts for business and individual effectiveness. In his 20-year career as a consultant he has helped leaders of organizations, large and small, throughout the world. He is chairman of The TQS Group, a management consulting firm based in Chicago, and author of 18 books, including Service America! and The Only Thing That Matters.